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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 4601395" data-attributes="member: 30936">I'm puzzled by the whole "We want to set up a bakery and collect ingredients and make bread despite that not being a element of the game we both explicitly and implicitly agreed to play, but you should let us anyway." attitude. Especially since I put ten or twenty hours into it for each hour the players do and they're not paying me, so why do I get less of a say in the world and plot then they do just because I'm behind the screen? If I am not having fun running a game, I will not run it. If that means I play board games, play video games, play in others games, read, or watch TV instead, so be it. My time, my table, my rules. I'm up front about it, and the rules change depending on who's playing and what we decide, but that's how it is. My table is full of people who engage the game and the main plot, help flesh out the world and the people in it, drive their own stories forward, and enjoy themselves. I game for myself and my own enjoyment. Part of that is sharing the worlds I imagine and the people and conflicts found within with my players. Or with the GM. Oh, and the whole narrative GM = control freak wanna be author bit is old and offensive. And how does that relate to the primary conflict of the campaign or the characters? Sounds like filler between major plot points. Of those, the only hook that would typically engage me or my players is Timmy falling down the well and the mayor's obstructionism.  And how do they relate to the primary plot and conflicts of the campaign? Funny, WoW (well, UO) was my first thought when people started suggesting to let them be bakers and adventure for flour. I'm glad you and your players like what you feel is a sandbox. My players and I do not. The games I run are dynamic (the world happens regardless of the players), have a beginning and an end, often have defined goals, and have major conflicts from which, along with the player characters interactions, the game's story flows. The are not tightly scripted, they do not require the players to go 100 paces, turn left, and watch a cut scene. I would not write a night's prep that required them to be somewhere specific to witness something or else it fails.To use your example: Assume that Brother Bartholomew, the party's cleric, is an orphan from a village a few days carriage ride from the city where the PC's are currently in residence. Bartholomew was raised by the village Priest, a kind and devout man named Father Joacim. They keep in touch by letter. Father Joacum's letters have been a bit terse recently, as if he is worried about something. The one morning Bartholomew wakes up to screaming and pounding on his door. The screaming is the woman who lives next door, and the pounding is the gendarme who want to discuss the body that's been nailed to Bartholomew's door and disemboweled, eyes burnt out, with blasphemes scrawled in blood surrounding it. The body was not there when he came home last night, and he heard nothing while he slept, nor did anyone else in the neighborhood. The body is Father Joacim. Bart's player wants to go home because it and some chips of black marble are all the clues he has. The rest of the party goes because they're his friends. This leads into a plot line involving cultists, scary back woods religion and eventually to the plans of a minor demon to make himself into a god. This plot may or may not relate to the "main quest" of the campaign. If Bart spent the night at the Comte de Mon's apartments after imbibing a bit to heavily, he would come home to discover the scene. We already covered this, but I have no interest in such a game. So I will not run it. If this means we don't play an RPG, fine. We can play a board game or a video game, or just shoot the breeze. It's never come up though.</blockquote>

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